The Rogers Red World Elite Mastercard, the anchor of my cheapskate credit card strategy, is undergoing some changes that give me some pause.

Effective in November, the Rogers Mastercard will remove the 1.5x bonus for Rogers services.  I’ve effectively been using it to pay for my Internet, phone and TV services every month since acquiring the card. I’ll still be able to do that, but I’ll need to spend more money on the card to get the same benefit.

The new rules are such that you get 5% cashback for spending money on Rogers services, which on the face of it sounds like a pretty good deal; what disappears is the (effectively) 3% cashback on anything else you buy when applied to Rogers services. For most people¹ this is actually a less rewarding strategy. Here’s an example:

Expense charged	Amount	Cashback
Anything	$1000	$20 or $30 if applied to Rogers service
Rogers Service	$100	$2 or $3 if applied to Rogers service
total		$22 or $33 if applied to Rogers service

In other words, by spending $1100 a month, you can earn $33 of free Rogers services. Or $22 of other free things.

With the new scheme, the same table looks like this:

Expense charged	Amount	Cashback
Anything	$1000	$20
Rogers Service	$100	$5
total		$25

In the new scheme, you can spend the same amount and get $25 cashback which you can spend on whatever you like. For me, this is a downgrade since the total amount I can apply to Rogers services drops significantly. (From $33 to $25 for the exact same spend). Put it another way: to pay for a $100/month Rogers service, in the old scheme you would have to spend $3333.33. In the new scheme, you’d have to spend $4850² or 45% more!

There’s also the demise of trip cancellation insurance for the World Elite versions, which wasn’t a big deal to me. I carry separate insurance for this sort of thing since the credit card benefits are generally pretty meagre.

So here is my current credit card strategy:

Expense charged	Card to use	Cashback
Restaurants or Costco Gas	CIBC Costco Mastercard3	3% cashback for these services4
Rogers service	Rogers Red Mastercard	5% cashback5
Foreign currency transactions	Wealthsimple Visa card	2%, and no FX fees6
anything else	Rogers Red Mastercard or Wealthsimple Visa, no real difference7	2% cashback

What this table tells me is that I could easily start using my Wealthsimple card for the majority of my transactions without really thinking about it.

1. Who use Rogers, of course. I don’t think the card makes much sense if you’re not a Rogers/Fido customer. ↩︎
2. $4750 of general spending gets you $95, and the $100 Rogers charge gets you the other $5. ↩︎
3. I could also use CIBC Costco for Costco.ca or other gas since those are also 2% categories for this card. After a while, it gets to be too much to remember… ↩︎
4. I don’t buy Costco gas much, but my spouse does. I settle with buying gas at Shell which gives me 0.03 off a litre thanks to CAA membership. ↩︎
5. I don’t need to remember to do this since I set up Rogers autopay via credit card. ↩︎
6. Part of my airport ritual is switching my default payment card to Wealthsimple so I don’t inadvertently make a “bad” FX transaction. ↩︎
7. Small difference: Wealthsimple Visa pays cashback monthly, and it goes directly to an interest-earning account. With Rogers, I have to bill pay the card, and then apply cashback earned to charges on the card. A bit more work. ↩︎